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The emergence of collaborative delivery models and working practices in construction industry has created a potential area for project success research. Previous studies have addressed success factors of various collaborative delivery models (e.g. alliance and partnering). However, there is currently very limited research-based knowledge concerning core success factors for different collaborative delivery models, exploring the commonalities. Thus, this study aims to conceptualize a success model for collaborative construction projects by identifying and structuring their core success factors through the lens of project delivery elements.

A systematic literature review was conducted, and thematic as well as content analysis of the relevant studies led to the identification of mentioned success factors in the literature for different collaborative delivery models. Then, those common success factors were structured in a model based on factors' relation to project delivery elements.

The obtained results present eight core success factors (e.g. equality, mutual trust and commitment to win–win philosophy) for collaborative construction projects, structured in a model based on their contribution toward project organization, contractual relationships, and operational system in construction project delivery. Moreover, the differences between success factors for traditional and collaborative construction projects are discussed.

This study's findings provide insightful theoretical contributions on collaborative construction project success and providing a departure point for future studies based on the discussed differences between success factors of collaborative and traditional construction projects. The findings can be also practically insightful for the project professionals in collaborative construction projects to succeed in managing project organization, contractual relationships, and operational system.

The purpose of this paper is to explore scenario development (SD) as a method for engaging known challenges in collaborative research projects, i.e. SD is the construct under investigation.

Criticism of the dominant, rational approach to project management (PM) and its underlying hypotheses highlights a considerable PM research gap for research projects (research problem). The authors undertake a six-step constructive research approach to investigate if SD (the construct) constitutes a fruitful method to support the management of collaborative research projects. A two-part literature review summarizes known challenges in collaborative research projects and introduces the history and application of SD methodology. The work includes participatory action research (PAR) in two case studies, constituting a qualitative research method.

The authors found the SD method to be useful for structuring and analyzing intuitive project processes. However, using SD in the management of single projects presents some fundamental challenges. SD, like PM, struggles with issues related to myopic decisions, a “predict and provide” attitude with clear aspects of path dependency in the project front-end as well as inconsistent and/or missing identification of success criteria among different stakeholders.

This paper does not provide any comprehensive, normative account of scenario techniques or compare SD with other foresight and future studies methods. Although PAR is in itself a research method that demands systematic description and execution, the focus of this paper is the overall constructive research approach.

The paper offers a broadened repertoire of methods to describe and analyse project stakeholder situations (collaborative aspects) and to structure and balance the need for both rational and intuitive project processes (research aspects). The SD method also supports development of graphical storylines and facilitates the use of influence diagrams, event trees and cost/benefit analysis.

Although PM literature contains several references to SD, the practical application of SD at single-project level has, to the authors’ knowledge, never been described in the PM literature.

The purpose of this paper is to achieve an understanding of the challenges and preconditions for inter-organizational collaborative project practices in industrial engineering projects. A framework for identifying the challenges and preconditions for inter-organizational collaboration is presented.

The adopted research method is qualitative, and empirical data were collected from the industrial engineering project sector in Finland. The literature related to industrial engineering projects and inter-organizational collaborative project management practices is summarized, informing the qualitative design of the study.

By analyzing empirical data from industrial engineering projects, the challenges for inter-organizational collaboration are identified in each industrial engineering project stage. A framework of preconditions for inter-organizational collaboration is identified, in which investors are advised to pay attention when deciding on the use of collaborative project management methods.

The findings of this study help practitioners deal effectively with mechanisms aimed at fostering and hindering inter-organizational collaborative practices. The identified preconditions for inter-organizational collaboration provide support for decision-making in every phase of an engineering project and can be used as guidelines throughout the process.

Inter-organizational collaborative project management practices have recently been attracting attention in the industrial engineering project setting. This research is an attempt to identify the underlying forces supporting and preventing inter-organizational collaboration in industrial engineering projects. This study offers a framework that can help academics and project management practitioners deal with the challenges affecting inter-organizational collaboration at each project stage and consider preconditions for inter-organizational collaboration in industrial engineering project settings.

In this study, we develop further understanding of how institutional change is created within a mature and local industry. In this pursuit, we examine how a collaborative large project governance model was institutionalized at an industrial sector-level through both industry-level activities and “institutional projects”.

This study builds on the foundations of institutional fields and institutional change, suggesting that projects are not only shaped by their contexts but also produce institutional change themselves. We conducted extensive fieldwork on the institutionalization of a collaborative project governance model in Finland.

The findings illustrate how institutional change in governance of large and complex inter-organizational projects is created at the institutional field level. The institutionalized collaborative project governance model includes aspects of both relational and contractual governance. The change was facilitated by temporal links between the institutional projects as well as vertical links between the institutional projects and the field-level development programs.

This is one of the first studies to address how a collaborative large project governance model becomes the norm at the institutional field level beyond the boundaries of an individual project or organization.

The present study investigated the effect of online collaborative project-based learning on the language performance and attitudes of intermediate level students at the College of Applied Sciences in Oman. The study is a quasi-experimental study and the sample consisted of four classes (93 students in total) in Nizwa College of Applied Sciences. These participants were in their foundation year and were taking the Academic English Course during the time of the research experiment. Two classes were assigned to the experimental group (46 students) and they were directed to collaborate online in doing their research projects. The other two classes were assigned to the control group (47 students) and did their projects individually. A language test containing reading and writing questions, an attitude questionnaire, students' project scores and transcripts of focused group discussions were used to collect the data needed to answer the research questions. The study revealed that the main positive effect of online collaborative project-based learning was clear on students' writing skill in the post test (i.e. students in the experimental group outperformed students in the control group).

Combining the goal-setting and job demands-resources (JD-R) theories, we examine how two project resources, collaborative project leadership and financial project resources, enhance high project performance in community-academic health partnerships.

With a sequential explanatory mixed-method research design, data were collected through a survey (N = 318) and semi-structured interviews (N = 21). A hypothesised three-path mediation model was tested using structural equation modelling with bootstrapping. Qualitative data were examined using thematic analysis.

Project workers’ hope, goal-commitment and -stress: (1) fully mediate the hypothesised relationship between highly collaborative project leadership and high project performance; and (2) partially mediate the relationship between financial project resources and high project performance. The qualitative data corroborate and deepen these findings, revealing the crucial role of hope as a cognitive-motivational facilitator in project workers’ ability to cope with challenges.

Project leaders should promote project workers’ goal commitment, reduce their goal stress and boost project performance by securing financial project resources or reinforcing workers’ hope, e.g. by fostering collaborative project leadership.

The findings contribute to the project management and JD-R literature by considering the joint effects of project workers’ hope and two commonly studied project resources (collaborative project leadership and financial project resources) on high project performance. Moreover, we demonstrate the importance of the goal-setting and JD-R theories for understanding complex health-promotion projects connecting academic to community work.

Inter-organizational collaboration is the organizational guarantee and key link to achieve the goals of megaproject management. Project governance has always played an important role in the construction of megaprojects, but the relationship between project governance and organizational collaboration is unclear. The purpose of this study is to explore the role paths of different project governance mechanisms in influencing the collaborative behaviors of stakeholders and collaborative performance and to elucidate the mechanism of project governance on inter-organizational collaboration.

A conceptual framework was developed based on a comprehensive literature review, termed the structural equation model (SEM). The hypotheses of the model were tested based on data obtained from a questionnaire survey of 235 experts with experience in megaprojects within the construction industry in China.

The results show that project governance positively contributes to the collaborative behavior of megaproject stakeholders and the collaborative performance of the project team. Collaborative behavior acts as a partial mediator between project governance and the collaborative performance of the megaproject inter-organization alliance. The complexity of the project modulates the relationship between the governance mechanism of the project and the collaborative behavior of the stakeholders, which affects the collaborative performance of the megaproject inter-organization alliance.

The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for promoting positive collaborative behavior among stakeholders in megaproject selection and improving the collaborative performance of megaproject inter-organization alliances.

As the foundation of social and economic development, infrastructure development projects are characterized by large initial investment, high technical requirements and thus generally delivered through complex contractor–subcontractor collaboration chains. This study aims to characterize the complexity of collaborative networks between contractors and subcontractors for infrastructure development through comparing the structural characteristics and the formation mechanisms of contractor–subcontractor collaborative networks for the following two different types of infrastructure: public works (PWCN) owned and operated by government agencies, and public utilities (PUCN) owned and operated by nongovernment agencies.

Based on the method of stochastic actor-oriented models and the longitudinal dataset of National Quality Award Projects in China during 2001–2020, this study compares how the structural characteristics of project-based collaborative networks between contractors and subcontractors for the two types of projects are different and how related micro-mechanisms, including both structure-based endogenous network effects and attribute-based exogenous homophily effects (institutional, organizational and geographical homophily), collectively underpin the formation of the networks.

The empirical results provide evidence that while the two networks are both characterized by relatively low levels of network density, PWCN is more globally connected around a minority of superconnected contractors as compared with PUCN. The results further reveal that compared with PUCN, the formation of PWCN is more significantly related to the structure-based anti in-isolates effect, suggesting that PWCN is more open for new entrant subcontractors. With regard to the attribute-based homophily effects, the results provide evidence that while both significantly and positively related to the effects of organizational (same company group) and geographical homophily (same location), the formation of PWCN and PUCN is oppositely driven by the institutional homophily effect (same ownership type).

As an exploratory effort of using network perspective to investigate the formation mechanisms of contractor–subcontractor relationships in the infrastructure development domain, this study contributes to a network and self-organizing system view of how contractors select subcontractors in different types of infrastructure projects. The study also provides insights into how contractor–subcontractor collaborative relationships can be better manipulated to promote the development of complex infrastructure in different contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new model to show how continuous joint learning of participant organisations improves project performance. Performance heterogeneity between collaborative infrastructure projects is typically examined by considering procurement systems and their governance mechanisms at static points in time. The literature neglects to consider the impact of dynamic learning capability, which is thought to reconfigure governance mechanisms over time in response to evolving market conditions.

There are two stages of conceptual development. In the first stage, the management literature is analysed to explain the standard model of dynamic learning capability that emphasises three learning phases for organisations. This standard model is extended to derive a novel circular model of dynamic learning capability that shows a new feedback loop between performance and learning. In the second stage, the construction management literature is consulted, adding project lifecycle, stakeholder diversity and three organisational levels to the analysis to arrive at the collaborative model of dynamic learning capability.

The collaborative model should enable construction organisations to successfully adapt and perform under changing market conditions. The complexity of learning cycles result in capabilities that are imperfectly imitable between organisations, explaining performance heterogeneity on projects.

The collaborative model provides a theoretically substantiated description of project performance, driven by the evolution of procurement systems and governance mechanisms. The model’s empirical value will be tested in future research.

The twenty‐first century is now seen as the time for the construction industry to embrace new ways of working if it is to continue to be competitive and meet the needs of its ever demanding clients. Collaborative working is considered by many to be essential if design and construction teams are to consider the whole lifecycle of the construction process. Much of the recent work undertaken on collaborative working has focused on the delivery of technological solutions with a focus on web (extranets), CAD (visualisation), and knowledge management technologies. However, it is now recognised that good collaboration does not result from the implementation of information technology solutions alone, the organisational and people issues, which are not readily solved by pure technical systems, need also to be resolved. This paper aims to address this issue.

Work discussed in this paper brings together the benefits provided by technology, with organisational issues, and people issues, in developing a framework to implement effective collaboration. The research uses a literature search, semi‐structured interviews and a questionnaire to gain the industry's requirements for effective collaboration in the construction sector. From these requirements a develop‐test‐refine approach was taken to develop the methodology for effective collaborative working for construction.

The findings reported in this paper are a summary of the results from the semi‐structured interviews and questionnaire used to gain the industry's requirements. They show that a focus on the “softer” issues (business process and an organisations' people) rather than a technology focus is needed to plan and implement collaborative working more effectively in projects. An initial approach is discussed in this paper concerning a structured approach to be developed further in the research to highlight to the industry the issues associated with the planning and implementation of effective collaborative working in projects.

This paper uses a socio‐technical approach to the planning and implementation of effective collaborative working in construction. It combines technology with the people and business aspects of collaborative working to provide an approach which can enable stakeholders in a project to benefit fully from having a collaborative working approach to their projects.